The ‘Early Bird’ scheme of the Municipal Administration and Urban Development Department where 5% discount is available for property owners paying the tax for the current financial year before the month-end has earned ₹101 crore so far.
Director of Municipal Administration N. Satyanarayana said on Saturday that the property tax revenue was accrued from 129 municipalities and 12 municipal corporations. While the scheme was originally scheduled to end by April-end, the government has decided to extend the offer by a month considering the prevailing COVID situation across the State.
There are about 14.05 lakh properties across the 141 corporations and municipalities in TS eligible for the ‘Early Bird’ offer and about 2.29 lakh property owners or about 22% of them had benefited by the scheme by about ₹5.1 crore. The response was the best from Warangal Municipal Corporation where 28,767 citizens made use of the scheme and had paid ₹12.16 crore in total.
It is followed by Nizampet where ₹6.84 crore was collected, Karimnagar ₹4.92 crore, Nizamabad ₹4.44 crore and Dundigal municipality ₹3.60 crore. The director has urged the other property owners to make use of the scheme considering that there are 15 more days for the rebate scheme to end.
In a communication with the commissioners of the urban local bodies concerned, Mr. Satyanarayana has directed them to bring about more awareness about the scheme to the citizens making use of various communication methods so that more are benefited from it.
He pointed out that the property tax payments can be paid through the QR code and demand notices from this year would be having this scan mark providing another and easier method of digital payments without the need for citizens to reach out to the citizen service centres of the municipality concerned.
This can be done through a mobile phone and payments can be made through credit or debit cards, internet banking, Google Pay, Phone Pay and the like. The payment receipts too could be obtained online. Payments through WhatsApp too has been facilitated this year with a special number - 90002 53342 allotted for the same.
Mr. Satyanrayana said along with property tax, trade licence renewal, building layout permission, and birth/death certificates too could be obtained through WhatsApp. It would be available in both English and Telugu. Those interested can type ‘hi’, select the language desired in the option given, type the PIN number or door number option, choose the municipal body concerned, select the PIN or door number option and enter the same.
Once the option is chosen and the number, if clicked, the payment options would show up, following which payment can be made. Already this option got 5.63 lakh hits, he added.
